Bellringer
• Download today’s notes: Spanish &
Portuguese Exploration
• Pull up vocabulary for HW check
• Answer the following question:
– Your uncle is a Portuguese ship captain who has
just come back from a long voyage. He tells you
wonderful stories of strange plants and animals in
the new lands he has seen. You are studying to
become a carpenter, but you wonder if you might
like to be an explorer like your uncle instead. How
would you decide which career to choose?
Great Voyages of Discovery
The Big Idea
European explorers brought knowledge, wealth,
and influence to their countries.
Main Ideas
• Europeans had a desire and opportunity to
explore in the 1400s and 1500s.
• Portuguese and Spanish explorers discovered
new trade routes, lands, and people.
• The English and French claimed land in North
America.
Main Idea 1:
Europeans had a desire and opportunity to
explore in the 1400s and 1500s.
An interest in discovery and exploration grew in Europe in
the 1400s. Improvements in navigational tools, cartography,
and shipbuilding allowed European sailors to go farther than
ever before.
Reasons to Explore
• People in Europe wanted goods from Asia. Italy and Egypt
controlled the trade routes and charged high prices.
Europeans wanted to find their own trade routes so
they wouldn’t have to pay the fees.
• Christians wanted to spread their ideas about religion
to other parts of the world.
• Advances in technology made exploration possible.
Advances in Technology
• Sailors now had instruments such as the astrolabe and the
compass to find new routes.
• More-accurate maps allowed sailors to travel from one
port to the next by using the open sea and by not having
to follow the coast.
• Shipbuilders, especially the Portuguese, made new ships
called caravels with better sails and better steering.
Connect!
• 1. What reasons prompted Europeans to
explore in the 1400s?
• 2. What advances in technology aided
exploration?
Main Idea 2:
Portuguese and Spanish explorers
discovered new trade routes, lands, and
people.
Prince Henry the Navigator was responsible for most of
Portugal’s success on the seas. He built an observatory and
a navigation school and paid people to sail on explorations.
Exploration
• In 1498 Vasco da Gama sailed around Africa and landed
on the west coast of India.
– This established the sea route to Asia.
• One Italian sailor, Christopher Columbus, believed that
he could reach Asia by sailing west across the Atlantic.
– The King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain gave
Columbus the money to make his journey.
– In October 1492, Columbus landed on a small island in the
Bahamas. He believed that he had reached Asia.
• Ferdinand Magellan was the first explorer to sail around
the tip of South America and circumnavigate, or go all
the way around, the globe.
A “New World”
• Spanish explorers called the Americas the New
World.
• When Spanish explorers arrived, the Aztec and
Inca empires were at the height of their powers.
• Spanish explorers (conquistadors) in the New
World found gold and silver as they conquered
the empires there. Also wanted to convert
natives to Christianity.
• They also passed along diseases to the native
peoples that killed possibly more than threequarters of them.
Line of Demarcation
Connect!
• 1. What was Henry the Navigator’s
contribution to the world of exploration?
• 2. Who was the first European to sail around
Africa and land in India?
• 3. What explorer led the first voyage around
the globe?
• 4. Why do you think Europeans explorers
called the Americas the “New World”?
• 5. What was the purpose of the Line of
Demarcation?
Homework
• Download the primary source posted on the
website for today: Christopher Columbus
• Read the source, then answer the questions
on a piece of paper to turn in tomorrow.
• We will discuss this source in class tomorrow.